The necessity for more radical measures for the prevention of insanity must be manifest to any one who will judicially consider the question of its rapid increase; for while there has been some attempt to minimize this important question, yet it is capable of easy demonstration that insanity has increased out of all due proportion to the increase in population in the last thirty or forty years. The statistics of Great Britain show that the proportion of insane to the whole population in 1860 was 1 to 523, and in 1890, 1 to 320; and in Illinois the proportion of insane to the population is about 1 to 400.

Preventive measures must come from the States. The learned and self-sacrificing profession to which we belong can show the way, but the state must compel people to walk therein. The state has assumed the care and maintenance of the insane; indeed,